Friday, August 9th

Friday, August 9th. Day 52

Today's miles = 19 Total CDT miles = 775

It rained last night for two or three hours. I enjoyed listening to it hit my tent. It never got too bad where I had to worry about water getting in anywhere so it was a nice relaxing night. I woke up during the night when the coyotes caught some game and were screaming over it for about 20 minutes but other than that I slept pretty well last night. I got up around 6:30 and was hiking by 8. The morning was cloudy and chill and it even sprinkled for a while before the sun came out.

The morning was uphill again just like the past few mornings. It was uphill 4.5 miles to a spring. The spring was suppose to be .2 down a steep ridge and it was our last recorded water source for 13 miles so we had to hike down to it to fill up. It was very obvious when I started climbing down that there was not going to be any water there. The whole area was bone dry. I hiked down to where the spring was suppose to be anyway out of desperation. I had one liter of water left and 13 miles before my next water. Sure enough there wasn't any water there. I walked back up to the trail very thirsty and a bit worried. I knew I had another at least 5 miles of uphill trail and the sun was beginning to come out. 13 miles in the sun on an exposed ridge uphill with one liter of water was not how I wanted to spend my day today. And luckily it was not! It was only 6 miles. Right at the top of the climb I came across a mining area with 5 or 6 open pit mines. The first 4 were dry and the top 2 (which Monkey and I checked with fingers crossed) had little pools of water in them. We didn't expect them to have any water and I was shocked when I saw the grey silty mixture of mine goodness. Bring on the heavy metals!! I was so thirsty by that point and knew it was still another 7 miles to water so I ran right down to that mine and scooped up some of it's precious polluted water and filtered it up. I added a drink mix to try and mask the flavor but my mouth still tasted like metal the rest of the day.

The afternoon hike was more enjoyable than the mornings because I had water in my belly and when it was time to decide to take the new CDT (around and up a mountain) or take the old CDT (straight up and down the mountain to a lake) my decision skills were not functioning at peek performance. Baboon and I have discussed before that when the CDT is trying to be easy we need not attempt to make it harder. Well, we decided to go straight up the mountain and straight down. And shit was it straight down!!! Once we got to the top we looked down at a cliff. Eventually we had to backtrack and bushwhack down to a trail that led to the lake. Our shortcut ended up taking quite a bit longer than if we hadn't attempted it at all. One adventure later we made it to the lake and fueled up on water before hiking the last 2 or so miles to Lillian Lake; our camp spot for the night. While eating dinner tonight I saw a moose and a baby moose across the lake. They eventually walked down to the meadow and I got to watch them for a bit before bed.

Tomorrow is "town" day (nothing there except gas station type stuff I think). As always, I'm attempting the early wake up.